Word Wonders

Good Writing

2300+ words on the novel today.

It doesn’t seem like that much until you realize that I’ve been up since 6:30 AM and it’s now 3 PM and I’ve exercised and eaten well, and got two boys out to school (with help) and cleaned up the breakfast dishes and eaten a healthy lunch and spent half an hour on the treadmill and that, as well as all that, it was GOOD writing.

I don’t mean deathless prose. I mean: I thought about what I wanted to write and made notes. I worked through my temptation to give in to Resistance. I put myself in front of my keyboard and pounded out words until some of them started to go together in ways I liked. I let go of ‘perfect’ and settled for ‘something I can work with and that gets me closer to the end of the story’.

These are big things for me, people. Big things.

Routine. Determination, Persistence.

Not things that I specialize in. (Going, rather, for a hopefully charming spontaneity and good humor).

But I’m trying to find a process that gets me closer to what I want (which is to be writing and finishing stories all the time.)